The Therapeutic State

Psychiatry Versus Liberty

For millennia, slavery—involuntary servitude—was a universally accepted social institution. Today, psychiatric slavery—involuntary “treatment for mental illness”—is such an institution. Psychiatric incarceration and forced psychiatric treatment are integral parts of modern medical practice and social life. The libertarian philosophy of freedom is based on the premise that self-ownership is a basic right and that initiating violence [...]

1Jul2008 | | 2 comments | Continued

Anti-Coercion Is Not Anti-Psychiatry

The term “anti-psychiatry” was created in 1967 by the South African psychiatrist David Cooper (1931–1986) and the Scottish psychiatrist Ronald David Laing (1927–1989). Instead of defining the term, they identified it as follows: “We have had many pipe-dreams about the ideal psychiatric, or rather anti-psychiatric, community.” The “we” were Cooper, Laing, Joseph Berke, and Leon [...]

1May2008 | | 3 comments | Continued

Treatments Without Diseases

In the psychiatrically correct view, mental illnesses are “just like bodily illnesses”; in fact, they are authoritatively declared to be “brain diseases.” The truth is that they are not. In medicine, there are diseases and, sometimes, treatments for them. In psychiatry, there are no diseases; nevertheless there are always treatments; that is, procedures declared to [...]

1Mar2008 | | 1 comment | Continued

The Medicalization of Everyday Life

In my October column I discussed the concept of medicalization and its role in modern societies. In this column I propose to answer the question: How are we to understand the contemporary confusion about what counts as a disease? Medical classification—the linguistic-conceptual ordering of phenomena we call “diseases” and of the interventions we call “treatments”—is [...]

1Dec2007 | | 4 comments | Continued

Therapeutic Censorship

Freedom of speech is one of the most distinctly American political values. In many European democracies people take for granted that their freedom requires criminal sanctions against the expression of certain odious ideas, exemplified by the denial of the Holocaust. In the United States, that would be a clear violation of the First Amendment. To [...]

1May2007 | | 0 comments | Continued

On Not Admitting Error

According to a September 2006 report in the New York Times, Afghanistan’s opium harvest has increased almost 50 percent from the year before and reached the highest levels ever recorded. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (sic) explained: “It is indeed very bad, you can say it is [...]

1Mar2007 | | 2 comments | Continued

Mental Illness: Sickness or Status?

Popular belief and scientific dogma notwithstanding, the term “mental illness” refers to unwanted behavior, not medical malady. Specifically, the term refers to the role of “mental patient,” a social status imbued with far-reaching legal and political implications. The law assumes that persons called “mental patients” are more likely to be dangerous to themselves and/or others [...]

1Aug2006 | | 0 comments | Continued

Mental Illness as Brain Disease: A Brief History Lesson

A 1999 White House Conference on Mental Health concluded: “Research in the last decade proves that mental illnesses are diagnosable disorders of the brain.” President William Clinton was more specific: “Mental illness can be accurately diag­nosed, successfully treated, just as physical illness.” Persons who reject the view that mental illnesses are physical diseases are dismissed [...]

1May2006 | | 2 comments | Continued

Psychiatry: Disease Inflation

In his classic, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1920), John Maynard Keynes observed: “Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it [...]

1Mar2006 | | 0 comments | Continued

Taxing for Therapy

The Marxian credo, “From each according to his
abilities, to each according to his needs,” is the
moral foundation of the progressive tax policies
of modern capitalist societies. The psychiatric credo,
“From each producer according to his income, to each
psychiatric parasite according to his cunning,” amplifies
that creed and garbs it in the mantle of therapy.

1Oct2005 | | 1 comment | Continued

Idiots, Infants and the Insane: Mental Illness and Legal Incompetence

In principle, mental patents are considered competent, free to accept or refuse treatment. In practice, they are often treated as if they were incompetent, forced to submit to treatment in their own best interest. This conflation of mental illness and legal incompetence—and the concomitant transformation of the mental patient in the community into the (potential [...]

1Jul2005 | | 1 comment | Continued

College Suicide: Caveat Vendor

Nulla poena sine lege (no penalty without law). The rule that a person cannot be penalized for doing something that is not prohibited by law has long been viewed as a fundamental principle of free societies. American criminal law does not prohibit suicide. De jure, it is legal to kill yourself. De facto, if you [...]

1May2005 | | 1 comment | Continued

Primum Nocere

Although the phrase “First, Do No Harm” is not in the Hippocratic Oath, in the opinion of many scholars Hippocrates did originate it. In his book, Epidemics, he wrote: “As to diseases, make a habit of two things—to help, or at least to do no harm.” This principle, usually expressed in its Latin translation, Primum [...]

1Dec2004 | | 0 comments | Continued

Psychiatric Services

The standard political-philosophical justification for the state is the need of the community for protection from criminals at home and enemies abroad. The community is now believed to be threatened by another group as well: the mentally disordered. Liberals and conservatives take for granted that coercing these persons is also the duty of the government. [...]

1Oct2004 | | 0 comments | Continued

House of Aces

Almost 50 years have passed since I first proposed that the concept of mental illness and the profession of psychiatry rest on fictitious foundations. “Mental illnesses” (henceforth without scare quotes) are behaviors, not diseases. Psychiatry is religion, rhetoric, and repression, not medicine. The basis for understanding mental illness lies in semiotics (the study of signs [...]

1Jul2004 | | 0 comments | Continued

On Autogenic Diseases

Our bodies are physico-chemical machines. When the function of the machine deviates from what is generally considered normal and if we regard the deviation as harmful and unwanted, we call the event or process a “disease.” Like all physical-chemical events, diseases have causes, which physicians call “etiology.” The familiar causes of disease are pathogenic microbes, [...]

1May2004 | | 2 comments | Continued

Self-Ownership or Suicide Prevention?

The core libertarian principle of self-ownership implies that we have a right to commit suicide: the state has no right to forcibly prevent us from killing ourselves. The core psychiatric practice of suicide prevention implies that we have no right to kill ourselves: the state — through its mental health laws and psychiatric agents — [...]

1Mar2004 | | 1 comment | Continued
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